AIPAC is a very effective organization, but I keep my distance because AIPAC demands that you not just be pro-Israel, but pro-Israel in a way that comports with AIPAC’s particular agenda.
This was brought home to me many years ago when AIPAC decided to put Nevada Senator Chic Hecht on its s@@@tlist. Hecht was Jewish, conservative, and a good friend of Israel. But he opposed all foreign aid on principled conservative grounds, including foreign aid to Israel. Aid to Israel happens to be AIPAC’s one of perennial primary policy objectives (which means, in practice, that AIPAC also supports foreign aid programs in general, because Israel in practice can’t be the sole recipient), so they let word go out that Hecht was an enemy they’d like to see defeated.
I understand that this is how power politics works, and AIPAC is a master of power politics. But I’m not a power politics kind of guy.